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The car - a 1990 745 GL, non-turbo, Rex/Regina ignition/fuel systems
Original symptoms: Ran like a top, purred like a kitten. About a month ago, whole family started noticing little hesitations once-in-a-while, starting up from a traffic light, or stop sign. Very little, and the car would recover in way less than 1 second. Then it "ran out of gas" but probably still had a gallon or two of useable fuel in it. But the gauge was sitting right on the top of the red area (happened to wife, but I can swear that I have driven it with the gauge in the middle of the red square).
About a week after the "out of gas" incident, it stalled and quit, would not restart. Set of checks, per the FAQ pointed to a failed in-tank pump, the only fuel pump on the Regina cars. Put in a new pump. No luck, still would not start.
Further checks found a failed fuel pressure regulator - absolutely no fuel out the return line nipple when cranking, or at any other time. Checked fuel in the fuel rail, and plenty was getting there. Also pulled out the FPR, and plenty of gas flowed out of the coupling for the FPR when cranking.
Put in new FPR and the car started. But it was hesitating when cold and a bit rough to start cold. As soon as it warmed up, it was fine. That was a 3 mile test drive. Drove it about 55 miles later that evening, and it was fine. That was Thursday. It was not used again until . . .
Next day (yesterday) took one of my dogs to the vet in it, about 35 miles each way. Cold start was noticeably worse, and the hesitation when cold was in the "bad" to "very bad" range. It improved slightly as the car warmed up, but was still a difficult car to drive in traffic. If the car was rolling at any speed, I could give it gas and it would take off just fine. But from a standing start I had to be careful and let it accelerate slowly or else it would start to hesitate/bog/balk until it gathered some rpms. Then it would smooth out and run fine.
On leaving the vet, it almost did not start, then sort of put-putted and coughed for a second or two, then idled just fine. Drive home was awful. The hesitation on acceleration was much worse than the trip to the vet. And, it would not take gas well when rolling at moderate to low speeds now. The car made it home, but was virtually undriveable except in the hands of someone very experience with balky cars (the polite term for "poorly running junk heaps").
Since getting home, barely, yesterday, I've re-read the FAQ about tune/driveability/troubleshooting. To that end, below is a list of what has been done to the car since February. It kind of rules out lots of things mentioned in the FAQ:
New plugs (Bosch plain old plugs, rotor, dist. cap (both genuine Volvo), and wires (Bougicord class F)
New fuel pump (in tank) (from FCP), new FPR (genuine Volvo, TascaVolvo)
Spark checked on cylinder #1, and it has plenty of spark
Other stuff:
Fuel filter (the big one) was new about 35,000 ago. The car saw very little use until we bought it, so that was 6 years ago, but still about half of the life of the filter in miles. Am assuming that the fuel filter should be good.
I did NOT replace the sock on the in tank pump with a new one, as I did not have one - thought they came with a new one.
As soon as I hit "enter" on this post, I'm going to take the Regina Green Book (Thanks Ryan_R) and check out all that I can check over with the tools I have. Which should be everything except the fuel pressure. Will pay particular attention to the crank position sensor, and the coil/amp pack checks. Will also recheck the FPR, engine/fuel system/ignition gounds, and everything else I can think of.
What is getting me is that the car ran just fine until the pump and FPR failed. After replacing those, it runs rotten. But, especially worrisome, it is getting worse very fast. Does any one have any suggestions?
--
1955 Human, Scott; 1991 745 Turbo, Brunhilde; 1990 745GL, Snuggle Bunny
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